Would you support a commuter tax by the mile if it meant the elimination or reduction of excise taxes on gas?

If you could make one significant change to the existing Tax Code (change a rate, eliminate a deduction or something else), what would it be and why?

Each of these questions is related to pending legislation or an issue actively being discussed in Congress.

Starting today, I’ll take guest post submissions for publication for a week in September. You can take any position on any one of these issues that you wish but the post must address that particular issue. Stay focused. Anything that’s clearly meant to be an "issue piece" about something other than taxes (i.e. abortion, Ferguson, immigration, gun control) will be disregarded.

In order to have a balanced mix of posts this year, I won't post all submissions. I hope to include a number of posts that represent a mix of viewpoints on each of the issues. That means it’s to your advantage to write a thoughtful piece and to get it to me relatively early.

All of that said, you don’t have to be a tax expert to submit a post. The call is for all taxpayers – not just journos and tax geeks though I certainly welcome other tax bloggers and writers to participate, too. I'm not looking for the most eloquent or the most formal pieces but rather those which effectively communicate a viewpoint.

Image of a modern fountain pen writing in cursive script. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are a few more guidelines:

Posts need to be submitted in plain text format. The best way to do that is just cut and paste your piece in the body of an email. Do not send attachments. I will not open them (if you have charts or infographics for the piece, just tell me about them in the email and I'll follow-up if necessary).

Posts should be submitted to guest@taxgirl.com by Sunday, August 31, 2014 at 11:59 pm EST. That gives you about a week and a half. Please put “Guest Post Submission” in the title.

While I’m hopeful that most pieces are around the 400-750 word mark, you can write up to 1700 words. And then I absolutely draw the line. Pieces longer than 1700 words won’t be posted. Pieces shorter than 400 words may be posted so long as they include something substantive – you know, other than “Taxes stink.” To give you an idea about length, this post is 938 words.

I’m not editing or redacting. So, use spell check and common sense.

No swearing, no personal attacks, no bad behavior. Keep it clean and reasonably nice. My mother could be reading. And the last thing I need is a call from my mother explaining that people on my blog aren’t very nice. I don’t want to have to increase her blood pressure medication because of something that you wrote.

No spam, no selling products or services, no free advertising for your own blog. Talk to or if you need advertising. And if you’re a lawyer trolling for business, shame on you. Get your own darn blog.

If you submit something, you’re agreeing that the work is your own creation and you are giving me permission to post it on the site. If I post your piece, you may also have to submit a little paperwork to Forbes along those lines.

You can answer one question – or all of the questions – if you’d like. However, to keep things organized, keep the content to one post per email.

You will get your own byline. Please also include a one to two sentence bio/personal statement identifying yourself, something along the lines of “Bob Smith is a volleyball coach from Wilkesboro, North Carolina.” If you have an established blog or web site, you can include a link so long as it’s safe for work. And by work, I mean traditional workplaces: just because you can view it in your basement doesn’t mean that it would make the folks at or IBM happy. So, nothing racy, violent, racist or otherwise disturbing. And that’s my call, not yours.

Like Judge Judy, my ruling is final. If you don’t make the cut, don’t take it personally: it could be something as simple as I might have received a number of similar submissions. Please don’t call, email, Skype, message, tweet or send smoke signals to me to ask why.

Lastly, the folks at Forbes are fabulous but they have absolutely nothing to do with my call for guest posts. This is all about me, me, me (well and you, you, you) so if you have a concern, issue or problem, talk to me and leave them out of it.

With no further ado, sharpen your pencils or warm up your laptop, glance around at work and make sure no one is paying attention… and write!